September 03, 2013
It is quite stunning to experience for the sixth
time in a decade a global debate about whether Western powers should use their
military superiority to attack Arab countries in order to get those Arab countries
to conform to “international norms.” After the experiences of Iraq, Libya,
Afghanistan, Mali, and the global use of drones to attack suspected Al-Qaeda
militants, we now witness heartfelt debates across the world about the wisdom,
efficacy, and legitimacy of an American-led attack against Syrian targets.
It is heartening to see the best aspects of Western
democracy in practice, in the British parliament’s rejection of the prime
minister’s request to join the U.S. attack on Syria, and in the skepticism that
many American congressmen and women express about the validity of the
administration’s case for the attack. Not surprisingly, President Barack
Obama’s administration is making the case that it does not need congressional
approval for an attack, and seems determined to go ahead with it, with or
without Western partners or the Congress’ support.
So in the coming days we are likely to see a few
dozen American missiles smashing into selected Syrian targets, accompanied by
passionate arguments for and against this action. Since we have witnessed this
scenario several times in the past decade, and are likely to encounter it again
in the years ahead (Iran? Sudan? Afghanistan and Pakistan again?) This might be
a good moment to step back a bit from the din and haze of battle and focus for
a moment on the core issues at hand that matter to all sides.
I see those issues very clearly as two sides of the
same coin: What do we do about the criminal use of armaments by a government
against its own people, especially when such action breaks prevailing global
norms and conventions? And what do we do about the criminal use of armaments by
a government against other countries—even ones whose governments kill their own
people—in the absence of legitimate international support for such action? Our
prevailing global media- and entertainment-based society does not like to
discuss such issues in a symmetrical manner that juxtaposes the criminal
actions of the Syrian president against the criminal actions of the American president.
Yet we must do so, if we wish to reduce the recurring incidents of Western
attacks against Arab or other regimes in the South that kill their own people
with impunity.
The cautious Barack Obama has now shifted into a
common policy mode of American presidents who are confronted with the need to
respond to a complex foreign policy issue somewhere far away and largely alien
to them. This is the policy that, in political science terms, should best be
called the “kicking ass policy.” It uses the United States’ massive advantages
in military technology and force projection to unleash powerful missiles
against virtually defenseless targets in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria,
Pakistan, Sudan and Yemen. It aims to teach those people over there a lesson they
will never forget, and push them to comply with global norms of civilized
behavior, but it also almost always happens without Washington fully
calculating or understanding the consequences of such a policy.
The silliest arguments that some Americans use to
justify such a policy are:
a) that
the United States, as the world’s strongest and most moral and liberal power,
must act to enforce international norms and laws if other collective means of
action are blocked; and,
b) the
United States cannot be defied and must be respected when it lays down an
ultimatum, as it did when Obama said that using chemical weapons was a red line
that Assad should not cross. In other words, U.S. “credibility” is at stake,
and Washington must strike Assad in order to ensure that others respect the
United States and obey its orders in future such situations.
Well, I hope the White House hires some political
psychologists to help it understand why it is that after every such episode of
American missile strikes against a recalcitrant dictator in the South, the next
dictator comes along and seamlessly defies the United States, totally ignoring
Washington’s military prowess and its commitment to its credibility. Is it
possible then that the American policy of kicking ass is mainly a psychological
tonic that makes Americans feel better about themselves, without actually
promoting greater global compliance with those important international norms?
I suspect that the massive disposition of Americans
against attacking Syria (over 70 percent oppose an attack) and the British
parliament’s rejection of such an attack largely reflect lessons learned from
the last dozen years of kicking ass around the South, and having to come back
again and again to do the same thing, because this policy is a chronic failure.
Yet it is also critical that we all collectively explore the legality and
morality of the United States and other powers that unilaterally attack
countries in the South without UN Security Council approval.
This debate is not only about Syrians killing
Syrians, but also about Americans attacking the world at will.
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily
Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and
International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.
You can follow him @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2013 Rami G.
Khouri—distributed by Agence Global